Otter unhappy with doctor program
Governor says WWAMI can’t supply Idaho’s need
BOISE – A program to send Idaho students to Seattle to train them as doctors has fallen short, Gov. Butch Otter said.
Otter, speaking Monday to a legislative committee on medical education, said the program that reserves spots for Idaho students at the University of Washington School of Medicine is not up to meeting an increasing need for doctors in the state.
The program allows students from Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho to attend the UW for the same tuition paid by Washington students. The program, known as WWAMI, encourages graduates to choose careers in family practice medicine and to work in their home states.
Most recently, the program was expanded to provide 20 spots for first-year medical students to train in Spokane, as reported Sunday in The Spokesman-Review.
“I’m terribly disappointed in WWAMI,” Otter told the committee, the Idaho State Journal reported. “It’s not doing its job.”
Otter’s statements contradict those made to legislators in January by Tim White, then-president of the University of Idaho. White had high praise for WWAMI, saying that 305 Idaho-funded graduates were practicing in the state, including 37 percent of Idaho’s family practice physicians.
Yet, Otter said Monday that the state doesn’t retain enough WWAMI students.
There’s a nationwide shortage of doctors in rural areas, the American Medical Association has reported. But Idaho is worse off than most states, ranking 49th in number of doctors per capita. Forty percent of the state’s physicians are 55 or older, making it the sixth-oldest group of physicians in the nation, the AMA reports.
After Otter spoke Monday, the committee heard from Idaho State University President Arthur Vailas, who wants to create a medical school at ISU. He said the state could get its own medical school by 2011 if it passes the various levels of accreditation.
Both UI and Boise State University favor expanding WWAMI rather than creating an Idaho medical school.
In his January comments, White said that states with medical schools retain only 40 percent of their graduates, compared to “a rather stunning 70 percent return” with WWAMI.